When I slid open my closet door to get my Imp flight suit out, it fell on me."

"A prank?"

"What else?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. But it's not funny. And if I were as clumsy as some of the old men in this squadron it would have stuck me."

"I'll do something about this when we get back."

"I don't need any help, sir."

"Maybe you don't, but your prankster does. Are you live?"

"Two engines green, weapons live."

"Drop to a trickle charge and prepare for what may be a long wait."

From his seat in the comm center, Face watched the monitor, saw the hypers.p.a.ce's lines of light shorten into stars. Directly ahead was the red and orange brilliance of the third world. Face nodded in appreciation; Night Caller had dropped out of this second hypers.p.a.ce jump not far from the world, as close as its gravity well would permit.

Almost immediately the comm board lit up as the unseen parties out there began communicating. "Glit One, Glit One, we have unknowns." Pause. "Got you, Nest. I read one Corellian corvette. Looks like Captain Dandy is back." Pause. "Confirm one dandy, Glit One. Glit Five, are you online?"

The next pause was much longer, then Glit One's voice came back, resentful: "Shut up."

Face scanned the comm equipment. He knew the basics of handling a comm unit, but didn't have the training to try to seek and amplify what had to have been a third transmission point out there.

Then a new voice, a strong broadcast from the occupied moon: "Night Crawler, this is Blood Nest. Respond at once."

Face toggled his comm and the switch governing the instant translation to Darillian's voice. "b.l.o.o.d.y Nose, this is Night Caller. What do you want?"

"We want to tear your face off and vent what's left into hard vacuum."

Face snorted. Was this piratical posturing, or did these people intend to attack Captain Darillian? "You're welcome to if you can, b.l.o.o.d.y Nose. But first, tell me about your wife. I want to know something about the woman I'll be consoling tonight."

There was a long pause. Then the voice returned, more somber than before.

"Darillian, I told you not to come back."

"I recall you requesting me not to come back. Do you remember us talking about the possibility of mutual profit?" Nervous, Face tugged at his collar. He was guessing now, presuming that Darillian had followed what seemed to be his predictable pattern in dealing with these people, "Have you really decided to close off all my avenues to more wealth, more power?"

"No... of course not. Very well, Nutcracker. I'm clearing you to land on Berth Two. We'll dine, we'll talk. Follow the signal in."

"Excellent. Night Caller out." Face disconnected both the microphone and the Darillian voice simulator.

Immediately the comm unit indicated a single strong signal coming from the moon that must house Blood Nest. "Captain Hrakness, this should be your homing beacon."

"It is, Face. We've got it, thanks."

Night Caller's TIE fighters were mounted outside the corvette's artificial gravity field. Wedge, waiting in his c.o.c.kpit, didn't care to spend time in zero gravity, but he decided it was marginally better than being shot at.

His right hand twitched. He tightened it into a fist and tried to ignore it. In one of his few protracted zero-gravity experiences, he'd had to keep two components of the external triggering mechanism of a self-destruct device from coming together. He'd done so the simplest way possible: exiting his X- wing into hard vacuum, relying only on his flight suit's magcon field and a life-support tether to keep him alive, and jamming his hand in between the closing components.

In the long minutes he'd waited, he'd been battered by conflicting thoughts. He'd resigned himself to dying, yet hoped rescue would come.

His flight suit inadequate to the task of retaining his body heat, he'd begun to freeze, yet he'd waited there, marveling at the beauty of the starfields above the sanctuary moon of Endor.

When rescue, in the form of Luke Skywalker, had come for him, he'd torn himself free of the mechanism and almost lost fingers doing it... and now those fingers became a bit twitchy whenever he found himself in zero gee for any length of time. The emotions returned, too. He could even taste the bacta they'd dunked him in to heal him after the ordeal. He tried to will the taste away and concentrate on his surroundings.

Just as at Endor, there was beauty here. The gas giant was an extraordinary pattern of warm colors, a mesmerizing painter's palette.

Eventually the moon of Blood Nest came into view, a large but dismal brown thing. Night Caller descended into its thin, unwholesome-looking atmosphere. Wedge felt himself settling into the c.o.c.kpit restraints as gravity began to pull at the corvette. There were no seas below, only pockmarked brown and red desert; the corvette pa.s.sed above it, heading toward high mountains in the distance.

As they approached the first set of foothills, Wedge saw a curved portion of ground below and to the side of Night Caller's course curl up and retract.

For a moment it made no sense. Then the picture fit itself together into elements he could recognize.

A crater, concealed from above by some sort of colored or dust-covered fabric. Beneath it, a laser artillery cannon, its barrel elevating straight toward the unshielded keel of Night Caller - Wedge powered up and hit the crude escape-pod ejection switch Cubber had wired to his control board. His TIE fighter dropped. He oriented immediately toward the laser rig. "Bridge, bring up all shields! Gray Two, launch! Follow my lead. Fire at will." He suited action to words, firing as soon as his laser cannons oriented on the artillery unit below.

His first shot creased and blackened the unit's barrel housing. "Wraiths, launch. We're under attack." He fired again, not yet bothering to arrest his plummet, and saw the TIE fighter's green lasers penetrate the cannon housing halfway between the barrel end and the control pod at its base.

The cannon operator fired his compromised weapon. Wedge saw the upper half of its barrel glow red, then yellow, then white from heat as it melted from within.

Gray Two sideslipped into position and fired. Her shot penetrated the phototropically darkened bubble over the control pod. Wedge saw the pod light up from within. Inside was a fuzzy-edged human silhouette that almost instantly lost resolution and was absorbed by light. The pod vented gases.

Captain Hrakness's voice was cool over the comm: "Wraiths, Grays, we have incoming from dead ahead."

The bow hold doors were sliding open as Hrakness transmitted his message.

As soon as they were separated enough to allow an X-wing to exit, Kell saw the distant thruster trails of the incoming fighters.

He was lucky enough to be the centermost of the nine X-wings in the hold.

That meant he launched first, and he wasted no time with repulsorlifts, punching forward with a burst from his main thrusters. He'd helped build the blast shield behind the X-wing's housing racks; he knew it could take punishment from his engines.

He emerged from the hold into dirty air and checked his sensor panel.

"Wraiths, I read two full squads of snubbies unknown types, mixed types, distance two point five klicks and closing."

"Night Caller is vectoring." That was Lieutenant Tabanne. She sounded as calm as her captain. "Wraiths, compensate for the maneuver or refrain from launching for a moment."

Kell nodded. Night Caller couldn't approach oncoming fighters with her bow hold open. Even with shields up, if a laser blast or proton torpedo penetrated them, there would be no ship's hull to take the shot; X-wings still in the hold could be vaped. So could any of the mechanics on duty there; or the blast could angle up against the ceiling and penetrate the bridge. Hrakness's maneuver was simple self-preservation, and Kell prepared himself to fly alone for a few long moments.

18.

Tyria's voice came over the comm: "So, you're making it a challenge?"

Kell glanced back to see the corvette in midmaneuver, Wraith Ten firing out of the bow hold. Tyria stood her X-wing up on its port strike foil and angled straight toward Kell.

"Wraith Two away!" Jesmin's snubfighter was next.

That cleared the center column. The other six X-wings in the bow hold, closer to the sides of the hold, would have a slightly more difficult launch; even ignoring the corvette's maneuver, they'd be several more seconds. But now Piggy was following Janson out of the topside hold, arcing around to join the group, and the TIE fighters of Wedge and Falynn were rising toward them.

Kell's R2 unit shrieked at him as the c.o.c.kpit alarm indicated an enemy laser lock. Without waiting for authorization to break, Kell rolled up on his starboard strike foils and continued the roll, spinning and diving; he could see the other Wraiths break and roll.

Wedge heard Janson's voice: "They're Uglies." Uglies were hodgepodge rigs a.s.sembled from components of normal fight-ers; they were unpredictable to both their pilots and their targets, sometimes characterized by terrible flight performance, sometimes by unusual and effective weapons combinations.

Wedge added, "Wraiths, this is Leader. Fire at will. Forget the standard wing a.s.signments. Form wings as you launch. Three, stay with me." He shook his head. This was bad. The Wraiths were uncoordinated, still half off balance despite the destruction of the ambushing laser cannon.

His sensors showed a trio of bandits headed his way. He desperately wanted to snap off a proton torpedo to shake up their formation, to put extra energy into his forward shields, but the TIE fighter didn't give him either option.

Instead, he gave his yoke a little sideways tug, felt the moon's thin atmosphere yank at his solar wing arrays, and was hurled to starboard.

His engines screamed with the change in course. The maneuver was just in time; green lasers cut through the air he had just occupied. Sensors showed Falynn performing a similar sideslip to port.

His Imperial-style targeting screen showed a lock on the closest oncoming enemy. It was visible in the viewport, an unlikely a.s.sembly of parts: a cla.s.sic Headhunter body augmented by TIE fighter solar wing arrays mounted horizontal to its plane of flight on each side. TIE fighter wings were designed to recharge ship's lasers and to provide some armor, and were never particularly aerodynamic; in this rig, they were wobbly, far too awkward to provide lift in flight, and probably provided tremendous drag. The vehicle had to be entirely dependent on repulsorlifts. Wedge fired at the patchwork vehicle, a snap-shot, and watched it shudder its way into a starboard rising turn. This made its profile longer, larger, and his second shot sheared through its midsection, just behind the c.o.c.kpit. Wedge saw components and perhaps crew falling out of either portion of the bisected, doomed craft.

He reversed his lateral slide, turning portward again, gaining alt.i.tude, and spinning into a corkscrew.

Falynn shot out ahead of him, then abruptly climbed into a loop. In a moment she'd be inverted, then diving, firing. It was a canny move, considering her inexperience in the TIE fighter: If she maintained a course without the slightest port or starboard deviation, regardless of how she gained or lost alt.i.tude, she wouldn't suffer the buffeting TIE fighters took in atmosphere and could keep her engines at full thrust, full speed.

One of the oncoming Uglies, a ball-shaped TIE fuselage attached to a top-mounted fixed wing and a rear-mounted rudder, took the bait and climbed to follow. Wedge oriented toward him, fighting with his stick, and almost immediately got the jittery glow of a laser lock. He fired into the Ugly's underside, scoring a direct hit on the ionic engines. The Ugly detonated into a brilliant shower of sparks and flaming debris.

At less than a klick, the third Ugly, which looked like a wingless, rudderless Imperial shuttle, fired on Wedge-thin streams of red lasers, a seemingly endless number of them. He juked left, continued that way as the broadening pattern of energy pursued.

He saw the Ugly's side gout-a side-mounted tube firing a concussion missile. There had been no warning from the TIE's sensor-lock alarm and the missile came in straight at him at less than a klick's distance, a blur accelerating so fast there was no chance he could maneuver out of its way.

"Ten, you're my wing. Let's go high road." Kell stood his X-wing on its tail and bled power from his bow shields into his thrusters. He'd have to trust his sensors to warn him of weapons locks for a few long moments.

"Five, acknowledged." Tyria followed his maneuver almost point for point.

"Nine is away. Two, I'm your wing."

"Nine, understood."

Sensors reported twin concussion missile launches from the oncoming squads of Uglies. Kell put on a bit more speed, but Thirteen gave him no indication they were coming after him. Two fighters at the rear of the Ugly formation were showing increasing alt.i.tude, however-climbing after him and Tyria.

"Six are away! Bring on your Uglies, your wretched rigs of cast-off parts, your-"

"Six, Twelve. No recitations."

"Yes, Twelve."

Kell frowned. Runt wasn't in his pilot mind; that personality never spoke intelligibly. More changes going on in his usual wingman's mental processes...

"Four away. Six, I'm your wing."

Wedge relaxed the pressure on the pilot's yoke. In the split second his twin ion engines lost thrust, he dropped back into the wash of laser fire he'd been avoiding.

Lasers splashed across him. The concussion missile flashed past his viewport, missing him by maybe ten meters. Then he emerged from the other side of the laser pattern... unscratched.

He smiled grimly. He'd realized almost too late that there were two ways a fighter that size could fire lasers so continuously. One was to have a highly advanced, experimental power generator worth a squad of A-wings.

The other was to fire targeting lasers, beams bright enough to see but not to do damage... bright enough to spook a fighter into fleeing before them in a predictable path, right into the line of a fixed missile tube.

Falynn's TIE fighter roared down from above, linked lasers firing. Her shot hit the shuttle fuselage, crisping a black circle at the aft end.

Wedge expected the shot to destroy the shuttle's engines, sending it into a helpless dive, but the Ugly merely lost alt.i.tude, trailing smoke. Its movement suggested that it had been flying all along on high-alt.i.tude repulsors.

Falynn dove past, firing once more, hulling the craft at nearly the same point. She leveled off below it, inverted, and climbed toward its belly.

"TIE fighter, break off. We surrender!"

She must have heard; she broke off her firing run, climbing in a dizzying spin until she was on station above and aft of the craft. Wedge grinned, imagining the volatile Tatooine woman cursing at having to give up a kill. Her voice, over the comm, was a furious sputter: "You Kowakian-ugly flying wreck, get to ground right now or I'll vape you, surrender or not."

"TIE fighter, we acknowledge. Don't shoot." The bizarre shuttle heeled over and began a faster descent.

At the top of his arc, Kell inverted and dove.

The two Uglies that had been climbing to engage abruptly broke off and fled at ninety degrees to his flight path. He rolled down onto his port wing and pursued.

"Five, Ten. I don't think they're running. This is strategic."

Kell eased back on his stick. "What makes you think so?'' "I don't know."

Strategic. What would this strategic retreat bring the enemy?

He eyeballed their flight angle, calculated that it would take them beyond the engagement zone, over a series of craters, over one large crater in particular - "Pig Trough," he said.

"Five, what?"

"Ten, tighten up. Stay on me." He dove to the lunar surface and headed through the broadening engagement zone, angling to reach the far side of the battle and beyond.

Jesmin kept up her streaming fire against the nearly stock Headhunter in her brackets. Finally the atmospheric fighter's durasteel armor gave way under her lasers. The deadly red beams penetrated into the fighter's aft end. A moment later the Headhunter bent, arching its back like a wounded animal, as the engines detonated, venting through the craft's belly, tearing the fuselage in half.

"Good shooting, Two."

"Thanks, Nine. That's five!"

"Five here."

"No, Kell. I mean, that's five kills. I'm an ace!"